Education Section

The Education Section is the place to detail your educational history.

What to include

In the Education Section, you typically discuss the highest degree you earned. Therefore, if you have a college degree, you would NOT include information about where you went to high school. If you attended college or a technical school but did not receive a degree, you should state how long you attended and your field of study. You must be clear, however, that you did not receive a degree. If you did not attend college or a vocational school, then you would include information about your high school education or GED.

The Education Section must include pertinent facts about your education. It should include the following:

name of the institution where you earned your highest degree

city and state of the institution

when you graduated or received the degree

what specific degree was earned

any minors and/or double majors.

Typically, people include their GPA although you are not required to do so. Keep in mind, though, that if you do not put it on your résumé, potential employers may assume that you omitted it because it was bad. Generally, if you have a 3.0 or lower, you may want to omit your GPA.

How to format the section

Formatting is important in the Education Section because there are often many bits of information that do not require full sentences or much space. In order to avoid a choppy list of short items going down the left-hand side of the page, you might want to consider columns that will allow you to include several short bits of information on one line. Remember, however, that if you do set up columns in this section, you will want them to visually match any other formatting you might do in any other sections of your résumé. For instance, if you place the city and state of your educational institution on the right-hand side of the page, you will most likely also want to put the city and state for each of your employers (in the Work Experience Section) along the right-hand side of the page.